For the cell-based assay, cells were lysed with RIPA buffer (Beyotime, Jiangsu, China) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Protein concentration was determined by a BCA protein assay kit (Boster, Wuhan, China) and equal protein concentrations were mixed with 5 × SDS-PAGE sample loading buffer (Beyotime, Jiangsu, China) and boiled for 5 min at 99°C.
All tissue and cell samples were fractionated using 10% SDS-PAGE and transferred to a PVDF membrane (Millipore). Membranes were incubated with primary antibodies overnight at 4°C, detected with HRP-conjugated secondary antibodies (Zhongshan Jinqiao Biology) and developed using an ECL chemiluminescence kit (Millipore). The optical density (OD) of each band was determined using Gel Pro Analyzer 6.0 (Media Cybernetics, Bethesda, MD, United States).